<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Growth in Character by Rikkapikasnikka</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22844035">Growth in Character</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rikkapikasnikka/pseuds/Rikkapikasnikka'>Rikkapikasnikka</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Miraculous Ladybug</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, Guitar, Guitar Finger Exercises, Learning to Grow as a person, Luka Appreciation Day</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 16:26:59</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,011</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22844035</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rikkapikasnikka/pseuds/Rikkapikasnikka</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Luka experiences his first breakup and he wonders what he did wrong. Apparently, he was too perfect?</p><p>Written for Luka Appreciation day on the MLB FF Discord.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Luka Couffaine &amp; Juleka Couffaine</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>67</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>February 2020 - Character Appreciation</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Growth in Character</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Everyone says Luka is a very flat character, but I honestly see a lot of myself in him. I just want my friends to be happy, so I often go with the flow. Here's to some character growth!</p><p>Thanks to all my friends on the MLB FF Discord who inspire me to write! &lt;3</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>He was doing finger exercises again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Back and forth, his fingers nimbly traveled across the frets. Up and down, the pick plucked each string in turn with his traveling fingers. He kept repeating the exercise, unable to pay his hands enough attention to move onto songs, and the notes kept descending and ascending as he went through the motions. It started with doubles, moved onto triples, and ended with quads. Yet he just moved his hand to the top of the fret board as he kept cycling back to the start of the exercise.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She’d broken up with him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Luka inhaled deeply, paused his fingers, and then sighed heavily before starting up again. He was staring absently at the wall across the room, unable to even register its colours, as his mind ran in circles - much like the circles the musical exercise was producing. He kept wondering </span>
  <em>
    <span>what </span>
  </em>
  <span>he had done wrong. She had asked him to be supportive, so he was supportive. It was a default for him, honestly, what with his sister and his mother. He supported her decisions, her actions, and he followed her lead on most everything. He offered to be there for her, as much or as little as she wanted him, and he let her make the important decisions in their relationship. He strived his hardest to make her happy, or so he had thought, and she never conveyed that anything was wrong.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Not until today, at least. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Léa was beautiful, Luka thought. Gorgeous hair, lovely eyes, a kind smile and gentle hands. But the things she had told him today were ugly and hard. He was still struggling to understand, to comprehend, and he had hoped that picking up his guitar would sort through the emotions he had no words for. But all his fingers could do were simple exercises, and now he was stuck on an endless loop of cascading notes and singing strings.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Sometimes I wish you weren’t so perfect.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Yet he wasn’t perfect. He had his flaws, just like everyone else, and he worked on them. He was bad with words, he was bad at expressing himself, he was too quiet in social situations...</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“I want you to just have an opinion for once!”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>But he did have an opinion! He had a certain taste in music, he knew what political parties he would support, he had a favourite flavour of cake, and he picked out his own clothes. He didn’t often share his opinions, yes, and he rarely cared what they did together as long as it was, well, </span>
  <em>
    <span>together...</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Are you ever mad? Angry? Upset?!”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Of course he was! He was mad when justice wasn’t properly served, angry when people plagiarized others' hard work, and upset when his girlfriend of seven months decided to dump him because he was too...perfect?</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“I just can’t do this anymore, Luka. I’m sorry.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>He was still struggling to understand. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t feel perfect…” He mumbled, his fingers hesitating. The last note trembled in the air before he pressed the edge of his palm to the strings, flattening them against the body of the guitar.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That’s cause you’re not,” his sister supplied from the other side of the room. Luka felt suddenly self-conscious of his boring finger exercises. “If Léa thought you were perfect, she...wasn’t good for you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He hummed, unsure how to answer. He respected Juleka’s opinion on the matter, and her insight was invaluable, but if he was honest with himself, he felt that itch at the back of his brain that suggested he had to </span>
  <em>
    <span>say </span>
  </em>
  <span>something in Léa’s defense. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That’s your problem,” she pointed out. “I just insulted your girlfriend, and you didn’t even defend her.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re allowed to have an opinion. It’s okay to not like people.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s also okay to not like others’ opinions. It’s okay to be selfish.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Selfishness, huh? Was that really what he was lacking? Luka guessed that, maybe, he was too laid-back. He wanted what his friends wanted, simply because they were his friends and he wanted them to be happy. He went where they went, ate wherever they ate, joined whatever game they wanted to join, played his part in the song because it was their song. When Luka thought back on the last nine to ten months, the entire time he had known Léa, he realised he had never picked what to do, where to go, what to eat. He had never chosen a song, just played what her band wanted to play, learning scores and sets when necessary. Oh sure, he had organised a few dates here and there, but always to a restaurant he knew she liked, always to movies he knew she loved, and to activities they had done before. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>This realisation drove him to pick up a new finger exercise, one that stretched his fingers across several frets and utilised his pinkie more, and he played through the looping notes of that exercise several times before he sighed again. It felt just as melancholy as the one before it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t want to be selfish.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Juleka just stared at him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I was just...trying to be a good boyfriend, I guess.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And hey, for a first relationship, seven months was pretty good. It had been a great learning experience, about himself and how he loved and who he was, as well as how to love someone else and share his life with them. It taught him a different kind of patience, of support, of joy. It taught him about pain and longing and now…</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was teaching him about forgiveness and acceptance and growth.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He could definitely learn to do some growing. He was only fourteen, afterall.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Next time,” Luka said firmly, stopping his current exercise and stretching his fingers in the air. “I’m going to try that, Juleka. Be a bit more selfish.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Good luck with that.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He snorted, smirked, and for the first time that day, Luka started playing a song on the guitar instead of the mindlessness of the finger exercises. </span>
</p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p><a href="https://discord.gg/mlfanworks">Come and join us on the Miraculous Fanworks Discord server!</a><br/>We are a community of MLB fans who write, read, beta, collab, and even exchange fanfiction and fanart. We run events, Author AMAs, calendar prompts, writing and art sprints, and we even have a book club for fanfics! Come join over 500 amazing, supportive Ladybug and Chat Noir fans today!</p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>